A Matter of Life and Death

David Niven    Powell/Pressberger

This was done at the end of WW2 and it reflects the preoccupations and concerns of that time: mass death and the likelihood of an afterlife.

DN is a pilot who jumps from his plane w/o a parachute but before he does he connects with a Yank radio operator and 'falls in love.' He survives the fall by mistake which creates a problem in heaven...proper accounting and all that. It all comes down to a trial in heaven with the opposing counsel being Raymond Massey and Roger Livesy. Guess how it resolves?

Some neat sets and matte work. There's a stairway to heaven that's a giant escalator with statues of historical notables (Plato, Newton, etc) along the way. Beautiful Technicolor in the earth-bound scenes. But this is so idiotic, so painfully naive, so sadly revelatory of British sensibility at the time that it's impossible to take seriously today. It lives as a curiousity.

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